Project: Using CRISPR technologies to permanently silence latent HIV
Lewin group
This project will explore the use of recent additions to the CRISPR toolbox as a strategy to permanently suppress transcription of HIV, thereby allowing people with HIV to safely stop taking their daily antiretroviral treatment. The CRISPR tools explored will include CRISPRinhibition systems and CRISPR Base Editors, both of which avoid genotoxicity associated with classical CRISPR-Cas9 knock-out approaches. This project will build upon recent work from our lab in which we established mRNA-lipid nanoparticles as an efficient delivery vehicle for the CRISPR machinery to primary T cells, the main cell type infected with HIV. The student will evaluate the ability of both CRISPR tools alone or in combination to durably suppress HIV transcription, and investigate the ability of this suppression to withstand different triggers that would normally reactivate viral transcription. These studies will include experiments using ex vivo samples from people with HIV. The student will become an expert in a wide range of techniques in virology, molecular biology and mRNA-lipid nanoparticle technology, and will be embedded in a multidisciplinary research group working on therapeutic development in the context of an HIV cure.
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Lewin group
4 vacancies
The focus of the Lewin group is to understand why HIV infection persists on antiretroviral therapy and to develop new strategies to eliminate latency. The lab also researches factors that drive liver disease in HIV-hepatitis B virus co-infection. The lab is also actively involved in COVID in relation to pathogenesis, the use of primary tissue models, and developing therapeutics using gene editing strategies.
Lewin group Current Projects
Research degrees at the Doherty Institute are administered by the University of Melbourne.